Dungeons And Dragons Online: A Letter from the DDO Community Team

Hello all,

As we finish up the first month of DDO, I wanted to send a letter to the community to talk about the Community Relations Team, what we do and what you can expect from us in the future.

Now that the flurry of launch is done and we're looking to the future of the game, we want to make sure that we are sharing our plans with you and that we are acting on the feedback that you give us. We can't guarantee that we'll answer every post - or even half of them - and we can't guarantee that we make changes based on every piece of feedback. But over time, we want to make it apparent that we listen to our customers when they share it.

Who Are We?

Samera, Gelatinous Cube and I are the team responsible for monitoring the DDO community, through forums, web sites and other activities that involve our customers. Samera and I are your main forum contacts. We're the ones who will most often be responding to posts and communicating with the Dev Team about your feedback.

Gelatinous Cube is the bad cop around here. He deals with moderation tasks, consuming posts that don't meet our Code of Conduct and dropping the pseudopod smack on those he deems worthy. He can be found slurping around the forums, dispensing his brand of muculent justice.

What Happens When You Post?

When you post, we read it. We compile feedback reports to the Dev Team to let them know what our community is talking about and meet to discuss where these issues fall in our schedule and priorities. For example, last week's meeting covered topics such as the Ruins of Threnal changes, Healing Warforged, helmet toggles and more. We also submit feature request from our customers, such as a recent request from the forums for more effects on weapons.

When these things are reported, it does not represent a guarantee that the team will work on any of these particular issues. However, it is our tool for giving the Dev Team insight into the things are customers are discussing, their opinions and their desire for future directions of the game. Often, however, there is agreement and plans are set in motion based on customer feedback. In any business situation, there is even disagreement within the team, in which case we debate the issue - but the primary concern from all parties in the debate is what serves our customers the best.

How Would I Know This?

That's our biggest issue right now. Despite the efforts we go to in order to represent the community, you have no way of knowing this. So, the hurdle remains for us to better communicate our internal efforts back out to you. We've got plans that we are working to follow through on, and you should start seeing us deliver on the feedback soon. In the meantime, we're doing what we can to step up our efforts every day to communicate back to you.

We're looking forward to working with you to continue supporting the game and helping this community grow. We hope that you enjoy being a part of it!